6 ms·

The first step is to convince people who grew up with the western "individualism and freedom are the most important" culture why they should care about elderly

The first step is to convince people who grew up with the western "individualism and freedom are the most important" culture why they should care about elderly that they are not directly related to. Those old people who have lots of family that cares about them will be fine in any case. So the "problem" are those old people that are socially isolated and went all-in on the governments' promises of public retirement care. But now we're finding out that the old retirement system is too expensive for the young generation to handle, plus the young were taught not to care about anyone but themselves...

pjc50 5y ago
People making this kind of comment should disclose their age.
- fxtentacle 5y ago
  Mid 30ies. But I used to work in a government retirement home for a year just because I was curious about it. And the loneliness in there is depressing. EDIT: BTW, if it weren't for the fact that tech pays 20x the hourly rate, I might even have stayed working in social places. But I have also experienced the other side, like when a restaurant refused to let us in because we came with kids. They argued that their mostly elderly customers would feel disturbed by the noisyness of kids talking to each other.
  - monkeybutton 5y ago
    My spouse is working in a government run long term care home. The conditions are bad and so is the pay. We're not the only couple like this I know, and at this point I feel like techs high salaries are indirectly subsidizing the system.
    - mrguyorama 5y ago
      Meanwhile my significant other works in our state government granting public money to help needy elderly people have somewhere to live out the rest of their lives. The amount of money these places get per individual is fucking staggering, like $15k per month, every month. What does that get you? Like a shitty bed in a shitty room with shitty daily food and 1/10th of a nurse, who, like you said, is paid garbage. But don't worry, some rich fucker's portfolio is doing great now that the elderly had to sell everything they've ever earned to afford end of life care, instead of letting their family, children, or even the next generation inherit it.
      - ben_w 5y ago
        Ouch. UK comparison: my mother spent the last few months of her life in an Alzheimer’s care home 3 miles from the family home, and that was “only” £1,000/week. Owing to the pandemic, I wasn’t able to see the place in person, but it looked pleasant enough on video call.
LatteLazy 5y ago
Since the old have done nothing to help the young (quite the opposite in fact) that will be an uphill struggle.
- pcrh 5y ago
  >the old have done nothing to help the young I suppose all those babies paid for their own housing, food, education, healthcare and vacations for up to 25 years before they were productive members of society?
  - yardie 5y ago
    If you borrow it from them then yes they pay for it.
    - pcrh 5y ago
      Who borrows money from babies?
      - slivanes 5y ago
        National debt.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - yardie 5y ago
        Politicians. It's one thing to issue bonds to pay for much needed infrastructure at the time. It's quite another thing to issue bonds to pay the interest on existing bonds. Our governments have kicked the can since the 80s. If you issue a 20 or 30 year bond you are saying I'm not paying for this, but kids born today are definitely good for it. Not all debt is bad but our government is using it poorly. A 30 year bond on a bridge with 60 year lifespan is good debt. A 30 year bond on 2 expensive, 20 year wars with no positive objective is bad debt.
        5y ago
throwaway6734 5y ago
> the young were taught not to care about anyone but themselves as were the old. Social Security won't have funding issues for almost a decade but there is no political will now, especially among the elderly, to find a solution to this problem
- rs999gti 5y ago
  With current birth rates in westernized countries, I'm surprised any of these social services will still be around in two decades. People are living longer, immigration can't solve the problem, people are relatively healthy and wealthy, etc. but there is not enough babies entering at the bottom of the pyramid to grow into tax payers to continue funding the social systems. Dystopian me sees a world where western governments will have to institute mandatory, two child per woman births, moratoriums on birth control, huge incentives for people with children under 18, and aggressive pushes for couples to raise adopted children and/or make new ones.
  - michaelt 5y ago
    > Dystopian me sees a world where western governments will have to institute mandatory, two child per woman births, moratoriums on birth control[....] Wouldn't it be a lot simpler to just allow more immigration? I mean, there are plenty of young, able-bodied, english-speaking people who'd like to move to rich countries.
    - decafninja 5y ago
      The politics around allowing immigration are complex and controversial though. Som e people will fight tooth and nail to prevent more of the "others" from coming into their country. I'm not just referring to the US and Europe. Look at Japan for example. Immigration has been touted by Western think tanks and pundits as a solution to their demographic problems, but instead they've chosen to go all in on automation and robots to attempt to solve it. I expect Korea to follow the same path. Probably China too. A lot of East Asian countries that are at the bleeding edge of the demographic bomb place extremely high value on population and cultural homogeneity. The West would probably label that as racism.
mrkentutbabi 5y ago
I am a non westerners relatively young person. I am in a western country to only make money. When I retire I will go back to Asia. Western country like USA is good for competition and individualism and you can make a lot of money because of it, and then you bring the money back to Asia, and retire in Asia, where everything is cheaper and community is stronger than in western country.
- TheGigaChad 5y ago
- refurb 5y ago
  As someone living in Asia, cheaper but you get what you pay for.
- FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
  I think about this plan a lot. It feels like a way to "hack the system". And yet, if everyone does it, then Asian countries will also end up with no community -- because all the young people will be in the West. Already, rural parts of China and Thailand are depopulating as young people go to cities. The same in Eastern Europe. And the same, come to think of it, in the United States. What were once small towns and farming communities are now empty save for a Dollar Store and a few 50-year-olds. This would be a global-scale version of that same phenomenon. The other issue is that this plan probably means you'll only be able to have a small family, simply because you're starting later. Over time that would also break the model. Hard for the kids to care for grandma when there are as many grandmas as kids. But for an individual it seems like a decent plan. Except -- Well, it's a little more workable for a man, since in principle, if he's lucky, he can marry a younger woman and still have a family. But that has problems: An equal relationship is less likely, and she will be left a widow at some point. It probably just won't be as good a marriage as if you'd married your highschool sweetheart. If you want to do geo- and cultural- arbitrage, it seems like, while harder to pull off, it might be better to do remote work and go to a traditional/low-cost country when you're younger.
  - sidpatil 5y ago
sebow 5y ago
"individualism and freedom are the most important" is not incompatible with caring for the elderly or your family.This is a misconception that people think of individualism as equivalent to being selfish.The best generosity and care one could provide is from his own conscience and goodwill, not doing it out of necessity or as a requirement.This was vastly pushed in EE where people would hijack Christianity or any generous aspect of a religion in order to promote their ideological umbrella of the system. The problem we have in the Europe with elderly (see Italy or other countries with similar demographics) is precisely >because< we think everyone should have at least 2-3 of their last decades of life lived in a comfortable environment where any agency is bad agency.This is overall a bad look on life and you even some young people behave like this, because "the system will provide".We put the futures of people under promises and hypotheticals. If you want the reverse take a look at cultures that think in the opposite fashion: SK,eastern cultures,or maybe Japan(though i'm least familiar with that, and what consists as "elderly" continues to increase);Now even there you have a lot of problems, but problems are inevitable and that is precisely the argument and reason of why we should strive to behave less "civilized" - as in staying comfortable -. The reality of life is that it is constantly degrading, generations who went through war always understand this and seem "superhuman" to later generations who grew up in peace.It's not about war and conflict between people but war against the degradation of life.
- decafninja 5y ago
  I agree with you in that the best care that can be provided is one through genuine goodwill. However I would argue that the vast majority of people are very selfish and do not have much more than a token amount of generosity beyond themselves or at least their immediate family. Thus while not the ideal situation, some amount of mandatory force by society is the next best, imperfect, option I can think of. I'm Korean, and it's been traditional in Korea for children to take care of their parents when the become old. Often times this meant multigenerational households where the elderly would live together with one of their adult children. But this too is changing, and today, quite a few of the elderly are either left alone or put into nursing homes.
galfarragem 5y ago
Fortune cookie: having a small family is probably the biggest mistake you can make in your life.
- decafninja 5y ago
  Since lots of couples in wealthy, developed nations are choosing to not have kids, I wonder how this will impact things in the future. Especially in countries where it has been traditionally implied that your children will take care of you when you grow old.
- mattr47 5y ago
  Or be dick parents to your children so that you have no relationship with them later on.
m0llusk 5y ago
It is really common in the gay community for people to not have children and to struggle throughout their working years. While many get help from family from childhood to early adulthood it is still common for gay people to either get kicked out of or flee from their homes and families at or before official adulthood. It seems like punishing people for not having children and not being consistently successful in their working life is going to leave a lot of old people destitute. That is not necessarily a simple cultural issue.
2143 5y ago
> But now we're finding out that the old retirement system is too expensive for the young generation to handle I had read somewhere that, long long ago people who retired at, say 60 would probably eventually die by 65. In that case the retirement system, pensions, savings etc would work because they only need to be supported for a few years. However, as the healthcare system across the world increased, people are now living much longer lives and hence they need to be supported longer. This stresses the existing retirement mechanisms. It's kind of ironic if that theory is true.

pjc50 5y ago

People making this kind of comment should disclose their age.

fxtentacle 5y ago
Mid 30ies. But I used to work in a government retirement home for a year just because I was curious about it. And the loneliness in there is depressing. EDIT: BTW, if it weren't for the fact that tech pays 20x the hourly rate, I might even have stayed working in social places. But I have also experienced the other side, like when a restaurant refused to let us in because we came with kids. They argued that their mostly elderly customers would feel disturbed by the noisyness of kids talking to each other.
- monkeybutton 5y ago
  My spouse is working in a government run long term care home. The conditions are bad and so is the pay. We're not the only couple like this I know, and at this point I feel like techs high salaries are indirectly subsidizing the system.
  - mrguyorama 5y ago
    Meanwhile my significant other works in our state government granting public money to help needy elderly people have somewhere to live out the rest of their lives. The amount of money these places get per individual is fucking staggering, like $15k per month, every month. What does that get you? Like a shitty bed in a shitty room with shitty daily food and 1/10th of a nurse, who, like you said, is paid garbage. But don't worry, some rich fucker's portfolio is doing great now that the elderly had to sell everything they've ever earned to afford end of life care, instead of letting their family, children, or even the next generation inherit it.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      Ouch. UK comparison: my mother spent the last few months of her life in an Alzheimer’s care home 3 miles from the family home, and that was “only” £1,000/week. Owing to the pandemic, I wasn’t able to see the place in person, but it looked pleasant enough on video call.

LatteLazy 5y ago

Since the old have done nothing to help the young (quite the opposite in fact) that will be an uphill struggle.

pcrh 5y ago
>the old have done nothing to help the young I suppose all those babies paid for their own housing, food, education, healthcare and vacations for up to 25 years before they were productive members of society?
- yardie 5y ago
  If you borrow it from them then yes they pay for it.
  - pcrh 5y ago
    Who borrows money from babies?
    - slivanes 5y ago
      National debt.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - yardie 5y ago
      Politicians. It's one thing to issue bonds to pay for much needed infrastructure at the time. It's quite another thing to issue bonds to pay the interest on existing bonds. Our governments have kicked the can since the 80s. If you issue a 20 or 30 year bond you are saying I'm not paying for this, but kids born today are definitely good for it. Not all debt is bad but our government is using it poorly. A 30 year bond on a bridge with 60 year lifespan is good debt. A 30 year bond on 2 expensive, 20 year wars with no positive objective is bad debt.
      - 5y ago

throwaway6734 5y ago

> the young were taught not to care about anyone but themselves as were the old. Social Security won't have funding issues for almost a decade but there is no political will now, especially among the elderly, to find a solution to this problem

rs999gti 5y ago
With current birth rates in westernized countries, I'm surprised any of these social services will still be around in two decades. People are living longer, immigration can't solve the problem, people are relatively healthy and wealthy, etc. but there is not enough babies entering at the bottom of the pyramid to grow into tax payers to continue funding the social systems. Dystopian me sees a world where western governments will have to institute mandatory, two child per woman births, moratoriums on birth control, huge incentives for people with children under 18, and aggressive pushes for couples to raise adopted children and/or make new ones.
- michaelt 5y ago
  > Dystopian me sees a world where western governments will have to institute mandatory, two child per woman births, moratoriums on birth control[....] Wouldn't it be a lot simpler to just allow more immigration? I mean, there are plenty of young, able-bodied, english-speaking people who'd like to move to rich countries.
  - decafninja 5y ago
    The politics around allowing immigration are complex and controversial though. Som e people will fight tooth and nail to prevent more of the "others" from coming into their country. I'm not just referring to the US and Europe. Look at Japan for example. Immigration has been touted by Western think tanks and pundits as a solution to their demographic problems, but instead they've chosen to go all in on automation and robots to attempt to solve it. I expect Korea to follow the same path. Probably China too. A lot of East Asian countries that are at the bleeding edge of the demographic bomb place extremely high value on population and cultural homogeneity. The West would probably label that as racism.

mrkentutbabi 5y ago

I am a non westerners relatively young person. I am in a western country to only make money. When I retire I will go back to Asia. Western country like USA is good for competition and individualism and you can make a lot of money because of it, and then you bring the money back to Asia, and retire in Asia, where everything is cheaper and community is stronger than in western country.

TheGigaChad 5y ago
refurb 5y ago
As someone living in Asia, cheaper but you get what you pay for.
FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
I think about this plan a lot. It feels like a way to "hack the system". And yet, if everyone does it, then Asian countries will also end up with no community -- because all the young people will be in the West. Already, rural parts of China and Thailand are depopulating as young people go to cities. The same in Eastern Europe. And the same, come to think of it, in the United States. What were once small towns and farming communities are now empty save for a Dollar Store and a few 50-year-olds. This would be a global-scale version of that same phenomenon. The other issue is that this plan probably means you'll only be able to have a small family, simply because you're starting later. Over time that would also break the model. Hard for the kids to care for grandma when there are as many grandmas as kids. But for an individual it seems like a decent plan. Except -- Well, it's a little more workable for a man, since in principle, if he's lucky, he can marry a younger woman and still have a family. But that has problems: An equal relationship is less likely, and she will be left a widow at some point. It probably just won't be as good a marriage as if you'd married your highschool sweetheart. If you want to do geo- and cultural- arbitrage, it seems like, while harder to pull off, it might be better to do remote work and go to a traditional/low-cost country when you're younger.
- sidpatil 5y ago

sebow 5y ago

"individualism and freedom are the most important" is not incompatible with caring for the elderly or your family.This is a misconception that people think of individualism as equivalent to being selfish.The best generosity and care one could provide is from his own conscience and goodwill, not doing it out of necessity or as a requirement.This was vastly pushed in EE where people would hijack Christianity or any generous aspect of a religion in order to promote their ideological umbrella of the system. The problem we have in the Europe with elderly (see Italy or other countries with similar demographics) is precisely >because< we think everyone should have at least 2-3 of their last decades of life lived in a comfortable environment where any agency is bad agency.This is overall a bad look on life and you even some young people behave like this, because "the system will provide".We put the futures of people under promises and hypotheticals. If you want the reverse take a look at cultures that think in the opposite fashion: SK,eastern cultures,or maybe Japan(though i'm least familiar with that, and what consists as "elderly" continues to increase);Now even there you have a lot of problems, but problems are inevitable and that is precisely the argument and reason of why we should strive to behave less "civilized" - as in staying comfortable -. The reality of life is that it is constantly degrading, generations who went through war always understand this and seem "superhuman" to later generations who grew up in peace.It's not about war and conflict between people but war against the degradation of life.

decafninja 5y ago
I agree with you in that the best care that can be provided is one through genuine goodwill. However I would argue that the vast majority of people are very selfish and do not have much more than a token amount of generosity beyond themselves or at least their immediate family. Thus while not the ideal situation, some amount of mandatory force by society is the next best, imperfect, option I can think of. I'm Korean, and it's been traditional in Korea for children to take care of their parents when the become old. Often times this meant multigenerational households where the elderly would live together with one of their adult children. But this too is changing, and today, quite a few of the elderly are either left alone or put into nursing homes.

galfarragem 5y ago

Fortune cookie: having a small family is probably the biggest mistake you can make in your life.

decafninja 5y ago
Since lots of couples in wealthy, developed nations are choosing to not have kids, I wonder how this will impact things in the future. Especially in countries where it has been traditionally implied that your children will take care of you when you grow old.
mattr47 5y ago
Or be dick parents to your children so that you have no relationship with them later on.

m0llusk 5y ago

It is really common in the gay community for people to not have children and to struggle throughout their working years. While many get help from family from childhood to early adulthood it is still common for gay people to either get kicked out of or flee from their homes and families at or before official adulthood. It seems like punishing people for not having children and not being consistently successful in their working life is going to leave a lot of old people destitute. That is not necessarily a simple cultural issue.

2143 5y ago

> But now we're finding out that the old retirement system is too expensive for the young generation to handle I had read somewhere that, long long ago people who retired at, say 60 would probably eventually die by 65. In that case the retirement system, pensions, savings etc would work because they only need to be supported for a few years. However, as the healthcare system across the world increased, people are now living much longer lives and hence they need to be supported longer. This stresses the existing retirement mechanisms. It's kind of ironic if that theory is true.